Having been in Jackson for this competition I must comment on a few issues.

Did any of these dancers who are with major companies need to be in Jackson? Maybe not. But certainly striving for a medal is a very worthy goal. Measuring your strengths and weaknesses against some of the best dancers can certainly be a good thing. Frankly I feel that a good competition is far better for the younger dancer in that they can win important scholarships and be recognized early on by ADs. I think the coaching aspect is wonderful too as most young dancers just don't have the opportunity to work with an experienced coach. Dancers need to perform not just take class in order to grow and often the opportunities are just not there...in competitions they are. I think the better ballet schools understand this and maintain a balance between the necessary classes and rehearsals.

I didn't see one dancer in Jackson that I thought would not be a wonderful corps members in any company. Just because they entered a competition (where you must show yourself as a Soloist) certainly doesn't say they don't have the "humility" to dance as part of a corps.

I do think that these dancers have a far simpler goal than to have steller careers in major companies. They simply want to dance and be recognized as artists. Some choose to work in large companies, some in smaller ones for various reasons and no one knows which way their careers might lead them in the end. But competitions like Jackson gives them a chance to shine and for some a life changing experience.

The Gala was truely amazing to watch and some shone more brightly than others. The standing ovation for Le Corsaire (bronze medal winner Joseph Gatti and Adiarys Almeida Santana) was worth the entire trip for us. Bravo to all the winners and all who danced! Joika

Here's a question for the group: what do Astor Piazzolla and Antonio Vivaldi have in common? They were tied for most popular composers for contemporary dance works at Jackson. Francis Timlin posted such a complete list of works at Jackson that a few minutes of work was all it took to come up with the following list of composers who had multiple pieces danced to their works. Since it offers some snapshot of the state of contemporary dance, I thought I'd offer it for discussion. (Moderators, If it belongs in another corner of the board, feel free to move it....) This is what the competitors used for "contemporary choreography that reflects the highest quality of dance created by contemporary ballet or modern dance masters..." (Taken from the IBC website.)

Here are some disclaimers about methods, etc.

I just grouped the Steirle showcase program with all the round II and round III programs. Then I sorted the lines alphabetically.

The result was that composers were grouped by name. In the program, it seemed that Debussy always appeared as "Claude Debussy" and never as "Debussy," while Mozart always appeared as "Mozart," and never "W. A. Mozart," much less "Leopold Mozart." It may not be consistent, but it appeared to suffice for this list.

Admitting this is a snapshot, what does this list say about contemporary dance?

Here are some observations to get things started:

Considering the thousands of people who have taken quill to staves, (and its modern equivalents) there's a sense of surprise that so many composers are chosen multiple times: random statistics would have predicted otherwise.

A lot of contemporary dance is made to music that is far-from-contemporary.

Composers who contributed the "biggest hits" in the classical ballet canon are unlikely to be heard in contemporary dance. I'm not surprised that Adolphe Adam doesn't appear on this list, but I did note that Tchaikovsky's numerous overtures, symphonies, etc didn't seem danceable.

Bach and Vivaldi pull the entire weight for the Baroque era: Handel, Telemann, Corelli scored at most a singleton.

FYI, KCSM seems to be broadcasting an hourlong special on the Jackson competition under the title: "Dancers" A couple of friends told me that it's been running this past week.

Here is the website, although there's not much info there:http://www.kcsm.org

(Click on TV Schedules and then search for "dancers")
Unfortunately the next two broadcast times are ...inconvenient....Thursday Sept 7 at 4 am (Yikes) and Sunday Sept 10 at midnight. (Yikes) Set your VCR or TIVO or dvdr, or whatever...

Mississippi Public Broadcasting is showing a one hour documentary, "Thalia's Legacy: The International Ballet Competition" from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening. Here is a link to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger announcement:

I sent an inquiry to the Seattle PBS station, KCTS, regarding whether they planned to broadcast the program in the near future. The response to the "near future" question was negative; however, I was told that my expression of interest would be passed along to the programming department, "which relies on viewer input for future programming decisions."

If you are interested in seeing this program on your local PBS affiliate, please write to them and encourage them to broadcast the IBC program. For those in the KCTS service area (Washington and British Columbia), the e-mail address is <ServV@kcts.org>.

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